A Solitary Journey (45 page)

‘A gang that works for one of the factory bosses or shop owners. They get thugs to beat up people they don’t like. Or they use forceful persuasion to convince someone to sell their business to them. The Peacekeepers are busy all the time trying to find out who killed who or beat up on whom, and they can’t often prove the bosses are involved.’ He paused and glanced around the inn again before saying, ‘It’s not smart to talk about them, all right? People have accidents.’ He straightened up, lifted his beer tankard and said cheerfully, ‘To your health,’ before finishing his drink.

Meg listened, part curiosity and part politeness, to the men’s conversation. She sensed A Ahmud Ki’s rising interest in a world that to him must be both vaguely familiar and disconcertingly different, but while she sipped at the beer she felt heart pangs for her lost home. Tonight she would sleep, gather her strength and resolve, and in the morning she would begin searching for Emma and Treasure. From the dragon egg she’d seen to her dismay that there were hundreds of factories in the city, but her spirits were buoyed by the knowledge that in one she would find her children. Her plan was simple. First, she would eliminate the factories that didn’t use child slaves and then she would have to patiently go to each in the hope that her children would eventually appear. When she found them, she would buy their freedom. Money wasn’t the issue. She could create money. She couldn’t re-create her children.

‘Shall we?’ she heard Luca say, and she looked up to find the two men waiting for her to rise. She followed them from the inn, pleased that the Andrak people had made an effort to construct a link to their past because its atmosphere and familiarity comforted her, and she was certain it also comforted A Ahmud Ki. She didn’t see the figure sitting in the corner shadows as she left, watching her with malicious eyes.

T
he city was full of surprises. In the morning, after a hearty breakfast was served in her room, with Whisper secured inside a carry bag she bought on the way home from the Inn of Dragons, she asked at the front desk of the stay-house for information on factories. The girl smiled and produced a piece of paper with a detailed city map. ‘There are three sectors of the city reserved for industrial matters,’ the girl told her as she spread the map on her desk. ‘The north-eastern sector, here; the western sector, here; and the strip along the south-western rim, here.’ She smiled as she looked up. ‘There are quite a few small factories scattered through all of the sectors, of course, but the government is trying to make them shift into the industrial sectors.’

‘Are any of the sectors using child slaves?’ Meg asked hopefully.

The girl’s smile faded. ‘Slaves aren’t permitted any more.’

‘Yes. I know they can’t be bought or sold,’ Meg told her, ‘but some are allowed to use their slaves if they were bought before the law changed. I just wanted to know if you knew which ones?’

The girl shook her head. ‘Not exactly. All I know is that the western sector is slave-free because it has been for a long time. I don’t know about the other areas. Why?’

‘I’m looking for my children,’ Meg explained. ‘They were sold into slavery here.’

‘Oh,’ the girl gasped. ‘Oh, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Meg reassured her.

‘But you must feel terrible.’

Meg forced a smile. ‘I just need to find them.’

‘Do you know what kind of factory they were sent to?’ the girl asked.

Meg visualised the document she discovered in the Slave Markets office. ‘The form had a name of the slave buyer—H R Papergoods.’

The girl’s face brightened. ‘I can find that!’ she announced and stooped below her desk, returning with a thick red leather-bound book which she thumped onto the desk and opened.

‘What’s that?’ Meg asked.

‘It’s the
Lightsword Directory.
It lists the names and addresses of everyone in the city,’ the girl answered as she leafed through the book and stopped at a page. ‘“H R Papergoods; Factory; Paper production; Owner, Herron Rekasa; one-nineteen Farcastle Walk, North Sector”.’ The girl looked up with a pleased smile. ‘Lucky you knew. It’s not in the three sectors.’ She returned to the map and studied it and pointed. ‘It’s here.’

Meg saw a maze of lines and names. ‘How do I get there?’

‘Take a conveyer. He or she will know where it is.’

‘What is a conveyer?’

The girl laughed, revealing perfect white teeth behind her pink lips. ‘Your country must be a very strange
place,’ she said, as she walked from behind her desk towards the entrance. ‘Come on. I’ll get one for you.’

Meg followed the girl into the street, which was already busy with people and carts and, as on the previous day, the weather was perfect—mild and clear. The girl waved to the driver of a small horse and open four-seater carriage who waved back before urging the horse into action to complete a quick U-turn in the traffic and pull up outside Mother’s. ‘Where can I take you?’ the woman driver asked.

‘Do you know Farcastle Walk, up North?’ the girl asked.

The driver smiled. ‘I’ve got friends who live nearby. I can find it.’

‘How much?’ the girl asked before Meg could speak.

The woman looked Meg up and down, lifting an eyebrow. ‘Out-of-towner?’

‘Come to find family,’ the girl replied and winked at Meg.

‘Let’s make it—let’s see—make it two notes,’ the driver offered.

Meg reached into her bag, but the girl grabbed her arm and said, ‘Not yet. You only pay when you get what you’ve paid for. Up you go.’

‘Thank you,’ Meg said.

‘My name’s Shar,’ the girl told her. ‘I hope you find your children.’

Meg smiled and repeated her appreciation. Then she climbed into the carriage behind the driver and was whisked into the traffic, fascinated by the experience and excited to have so easily found the factory where her children could be waiting.

The Winding Road to the castle and the plateau cliff were both familiar and changed to A Ahmud Ki as he ascended. Passing carriages and wagons carried people
who looked at him as a curiosity, being one of the very few people actually walking the road. The road was narrow, as it always had been, but it was cobbled like the city streets, and drains ran along the edge shielded by a white picket fence that looked out of place. He had walked all morning from Mother’s, heading north and catching glimpses of the castle plateau between the buildings, but never recognising a familiar place, until he reached a wide street with a sign identifying it as the King’s Way. Again, nothing was familiar, as if even the road had changed course over time, until he reached an intersection near the plateau base that branched into what he remembered was the Winding Road. The sign called it Bretan Way, but A Ahmud Ki knew where it led.

At the summit the road expanded into a space at the castle gates where a host of carriages and wagons were parked, some attended by drivers, and at the castle gates stood four men in Peacekeeper uniforms. The sight of the Peacekeepers unsettled A Ahmud Ki, but he controlled his nervousness as he approached the gates. A small door was open through the base of one of the massive wood-and-iron castle gates attended by an older man with greying hair in a dark-blue uniform who addressed A Ahmud Ki with, ‘Just by yourself, sir?’

‘Yes,’ A Ahmud Ki answered and went to step through, but the attendant touched his arm and said, ‘It costs three notes to join a tour, sir.’

A Ahmud Ki glanced down at the attendant’s hand on his arm, until the attendant removed it, but sensing movement behind him he glanced over his shoulder to discover the four Peacekeepers watching closely. To the attendant he said quietly, ‘And if I don’t want a tour?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but the castle is government property and we don’t allow people to wander through at will,’
the attendant explained. ‘The next tour is due to leave shortly, if you want to look through the castle, sir.’

There was a time,
thought A Ahmud Ki, as he fished three Andrak notes from his pocket,
when I could come and go from here as I pleased, and no one would dare touch my arm.
‘Where do I wait?’ he asked. He followed the attendant’s instructions and entered a small courtyard purpose-built behind the gates where a group of eighteen people were chatting and pointing to aspects of the castle wall architecture. So they intended for him to follow the crowd like a sheep through the place he knew like the back of his hand?
As soon as I can,
he decided,
I’ll lose them and find my way for myself.

‘We’ve only got thirty children working here now,’ the factory foreman explained as Meg searched the rows of bobbing heads. Metal and wooden machinery clanked and whirred and the air stank of chemicals and pulped wood. ‘Some of them are foreign kids. They don’t speak Andrak.’

Meg’s heart raced. ‘I’m keen to see the foreign children,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for children who were bought as slaves.’

‘Are you from the government?’ the foreman asked, his bushy black eyebrows knitting pensively.

The idea of lying flashed through her mind, but she shook her head. ‘I’m looking for my children,’ she said.

The foreman’s expression changed, his brow furrowing with irritation. ‘Can’t let you go stirring up the children with that notion, lady. You’d need the boss’s permission to go looking in here.’

Meg looked down at the man, conscious that his balding forehead contrasted with his bushy eyebrows. ‘I’ve come to find my children. You go find your boss if you want, but I’m going in.’

The foreman stepped in her path as she went to enter the factory and he signalled to three men lounging along the wall. They straightened and sauntered towards the door. ‘Now listen, lady. If you’re not from the government and you’re not a buyer you’ve got no reason to come inside. If you want to keep your pretty looks intact, you move on. All right?’

‘Where’s your boss?’ she demanded.

‘Mister Rekasa wouldn’t be interested in discussing what you’re here for. He’s bought his slaves and he intends to get his money’s worth from them. You can’t blame him, can you?’ The foreman grinned with false charm and his three henchmen chuckled.

‘If you’re looking for a man later, gorgeous, I’m not busy after work,’ offered one henchman, a solid man with steely black eyes and a shaved head, and he winked and blew a kiss. She flashed through her repertoire of spells, seething with anger, her will demanding to see the children now that she was so close, but she gritted her teeth and walked away from the white tin shed inscribed with the company name in red-and-yellow lettering, ignoring the men’s lewd jeers following in her wake. Killing the rat-catcher in Port River had been a terrible mistake. Magic was not for killing people.
Didn’t I make that promise a long time ago?
she reminded herself. But another voice within chastised her.
Your children are here. No man has the right to stand between you and your children.

Nothing remained of the old Andrakian castle, the palace or its grounds as he remembered. He knew Mareg’s attacks destroyed Thana’s old buildings, but he assumed Dylan would have engineered the rebuilding of the palace after he had trapped both himself and Mareg in Se’Treya—unless Mareg somehow managed to evade his prophesied death at Dylan’s hands. No. This new
world showed no signs of a Dragonlord’s imprint—no magic, no sense of a greater power than the power of mortal humanity. The castle was abandoned, according to Luca, seven hundred years ago. The guide leading his group stopped the party at a closed doorway and addressed everyone as she did at selected points in the palace tour. ‘These doors once led into the throne room of the original Bretan palace that stood here a thousand years ago in the reign of the mythical King Dilun of Andrak.’

It was Andrakis,
A Ahmud Ki corrected irritably.

‘The castle was abandoned around the thirty-second century because of the Great Plague and in fact most of the original city was burned to the ground to stop the plague spreading. Then an earthquake in thirty-three- twenty-two caused the centre of the plateau to collapse in on a fault that existed at its core and the old palace and most of the grounds were destroyed. Beyond this door is a chasm that drops a hundred spans at its deepest sections. Apparently the ancient kings dug hundreds of tunnels under the castle without realising that each new tunnel was weakening the plateau’s geological structure. In the end it simply fell in on them.’

The party chuckled at the guide’s flippant explanation, but A Ahmud Ki was appalled. ‘Are any of the old tunnels or caves still surviving?’ he asked.

The guide, a plump blonde woman in a tight dress the same dark blue as the uniform worn by the front gate attendant, peered over the party at the stranger and replied, ‘No. Excavators in recent years have tried to dig up artefacts from the past with varying degrees of success, but they all confirm that the heart of the plateau is nothing but compressed and collapsed rock and earth.’ She directed the rest of her comment to the wider party. ‘One strange phenomenon out of the collapse is
the flow of Dragon River. It springs from the heart of the plateau, but it hasn’t always flowed. The oldest Bretan records refer to it so we know it existed in ancient times, but after the thirty-three-twenty-two earthquake the river dried up for almost two hundred years. Then it suddenly began to flow again about five hundred years ago and has become the jewel of our parklands and water system and sustains the growth of our beautiful city.’

A Ahmud Ki let the woman prattle on about recent history and the redevelopment of the castle as a tourist attraction. If the old throne room had been beyond these doors, then he finally had a sense of where he was, but if the tomb of Mareg’s brother, the Dragonlord after whom the old nation was named, was really buried in the plateau’s collapse then there was nothing here for him to retrieve. His only remaining hope was that his black tower still stood in the old palace gardens. No one could have entered it in the ensuing thousand years and a mere earthquake wouldn’t have shaken its foundations. ‘What about the black tower in the palace gardens?’ A Ahmud Ki asked, interrupting the guide. ‘Do we get to see it?’

The guide’s startled stare warned him that his question made no sense to her. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no black tower anywhere on the grounds. You must be confusing this castle with one somewhere else.’ She waited for him to explain, but when he looked away at the doors instead she finished her talk and led the party on through a section converted to a museum.

Meg studied the children from the window that let light through the angled shed roof. She pretended to leave after the confrontation, but patiently waited in a nearby alley until the men guarding the factory stopped emerging from the door to check the street. Whisper
was restless in her bag so Meg cautiously let the rat out to sniff around and relieve herself.
Looking,
Whisper informed her abruptly before darting along the narrow alley into Farcastle Walk, much to Meg’s consternation. She went to the corner and peered out, checking that none of the guards were present at the paper factory before searching for Whisper, but the rat had vanished and a guard was visible in the factory entrance, so she waited until Whisper returned, bounding along the ground towards her.
Found,
the rat said.
Come.
She led Meg to the street. No one was in the factory doorway.
Come,
Whisper urged and raced straight across the street, dodging a horse before disappearing under the gap of a cooper’s shop entrance. Meg checked the factory again before following Whisper’s course, but halted outside the door. The rat’s head appeared under the door.
Come,
Whisper urged, and disappeared. Reluctantly and warily Meg opened the door.

Inside was a room of higgledy-piggledy boxes and barrels that smelled of freshly sawn wood, but she froze when she heard voices and footsteps. ‘That consignment for Lammers ready?’